Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Nobody has any money anymore, including rich people who want to give money to poor people to make themselves feel better about being rich. One man is responsible for this, the end of charity, and his horrible name is Bernie "Ponzi Scheme" Madoff. The NY Times reports on this legitimately bad news:

Around the country, the nonprofit community is reeling from the Madoff scandal. At least two other foundations have been forced to close their doors, having lost virtually all their assets to what authorities describe as a Ponzi scheme that depended on new investment money to pay off on earlier investments.

Charities that depended on those foundations for financing, like the Innocence Project and the UJA Federation, and wealthy donors like Norman Braman, Mort Zuckerman and J. Ezra Merkin have now added the Madoff scandal to the list of reasons that fund-raising has been crimped this fall. In some cases, the foundations had placed their money with Mr. Madoff directly; others had invested with funds that turned assets over to him. And some nonprofits relied on a steady stream of money from donors, like Ms. Levy-Church, with now vanishing fortunes.

Everyone who reads this blog is a cous cous-eating filthy hippy who works at non-profits, so this is bad news for our limited readership. Sorry guys.